Sunday, August 26, 2012

Earlier this week you likened Excuses and Defensiveness to
schoolyard chums, skipping off together on a romp. The connection began with Excuses, those
you’d made to yourself and others over the years and those offered to you, not
necessarily in any chronology.

You thought, for instance, you were shrewdly avoiding
excuses to a writer you much admired to the point of considering her a
mentor. She well knew your schedule as
an editor. You didn’t have to mention
that. Instead, you asked her for advice
on making time to write.

Her answer was the essence of simplicity. “Give up something that takes an hour or so
of your time each day.” She smiled. “Even if it’s sleep.”

These past several hours, another pair of chums has
presented themselves to you for your consideration. You don’t have any live mentors to share them
with. In consequence, this time at your
blog becomes your mentor and sharing ground.
The two are Magic and Illusion.

What to call magic?
It is means of producing a desired result by a combination of occult
information, which could be spells, as a result of an incantation or formula,
or by control of forces beyond those within the range of human understanding.

Illusion is an appearance or an impression of an event
taking place or an ability being demonstrated.
There was some argument about an Israeli, Uri Geller, having psychic
abilities. Indeed, his signature effect
seems to have been causing a spoon to bend.
Or perhaps to give the appearance of bending. Is Geller an entertainer, a practitioner of
psycho- and telekinesis? Is that last question
a mere redundancy?

In its way the subject of magic becomes a good index for
charting emotional age. To the young, a
well conceived illusion seems absolutely magical, reinforcing belief in wished
for extraordinary powers. Experience may
bring with it the sense of cynicism necessary to del with things that seem to
defy demonstrable effects.

In some ways, the greater magic resides in something as
simple as the sun rising every morning in the east and setting in the west,
even though you have enough experience to know this is so and some reasons for
understanding why it is so. Were you to
pursue the matter in enough depth, there is probability you’d shift your choice
of words from magical to magisterial or perhaps magnificent, both of which are
true.

When it comes to mastering some of the conjuror’s tricks,
writers are right up there with the better illusionists. You have a few tricks of your own, the
results of experiment and thought and, in some cases, the mischievous results
of pure accident. You seek out writers
whom you consider to be superior illusionists, individuals who transport you to
places and times you know to be contrived, and yet you forget sometimes to
breathe while reading their prose. By
continuous reading, you are in constant contact with writers who have honed
their skills of illusion and magical abilities to plateaus where you sometimes
reel in envy. You are pleased for them,
but in the most selfish way: They
continue to make it possible for you to believe beyond that Coleridge willing
suspension of belief to the point where, as yesterday, when you learned Dennis
Lehane has a title forthcoming in October, you had within ten minutes of the
discovery placed an order for it.

Reading for pleasure has come to mean that you go over a
work until you think you see how the author brought forth an effect that so
impressed you. Seeing—or thinking you
see—how an effect it accomplished is cold comfort. Now, aware it can be done, you have to look
for ways to enhance your own sleight of hand coordination.

In some ways, this discussion stays in the terrain of being
academic. You can offer an explanation
for a thing, but it does not truly work unless your belief it absolute. The other element to consider here is
belief. The illusion of magic needs to
be so palpable that you have no choice but to believe it, however many rational
arguments your brain dishes up. You have
to out believe your rational mind.

This is no easy trick because, over the years, you’ve
managed to see some of the effects. For the longest time, this was the place where
you were shut down, your rational mind a combination of The Red Baron and Eddie
Rickenbacher, potting away at Fokkers and Spads and Sopwith Camels with uncanny
accuracy. You sometimes discover illusions as though
part of the landing pattern at O’Hare or LAX.
You have to find ways to get them clearance to land.

You have to find a way to build illusions that go beyond
rational argument.

You have to start with belief, then find ways to prop it up
with details and sensual triggers to the point where what the characters want,
never mind how trivial it is, seems achingly real. And then you reach for it.

Preface

These are notes, arguments, and attempts to resolve any lingering indecision about works in progress, things I have observed, books and stories I have read, things I wish I had done, and things I wish I had not done. They are in effect the kinds of notes I put in bottles at the beach as a kid, but this time the hoped for reader is the me of the future, browsing here for the energy and vision that got these notes down in the first place.